In a world of second chances, athletes who dope bear permanent scars

What’s beef? Beef is when the other swimmers call you a cheat. Beef is when you finger wag after winning the heat. Beef is Lilly King taking shots at Yulia Efimova after the race.

Efimova was booed by the crowd before the 100-meter backstroke. She’s a villain if there’s ever been one, not only does she have a history of failed doping tests but even her participation in these Olympics is under scrutiny, given that she tested positive for meldonium earlier this year, a charge that was later withdrawn by the International Swimming Federation. That and the fact that with all of this hanging over her, she arrogantly wagged her finger after winning her heat the day before the final.

She lost the gold to King and after the race King made a very pointed statement to her:

“It was so incredible, winning a gold medal and knowing I did it clean.”

Efimova is a labeled cheat, but she’s not special in that regard. Sun Yang, who won the 200 freestyle gold, served a three-month ban in 2014 after testing positive for trimetazidine. The excuse was that it was for a heart condition, a plight that Maria Sharapova can relate to. For Sun Yang, his Lilly King is Mack Horton. The Australian beat Yang in the 400 freestyle final for gold and openly admitted that he considered the disgrace if Yang had beat him. Earlier in the week, Yang had tried to say hello to Horton, and was met with a cold shoulder. Horton explained why he was so unreceptive afterwards, saying:

“I didn’t respond because I don’t have time for drug cheats.”

It goes beyond the swimming world. When King was asked if she held the same belief when it came to American sprinter Justin Gatlin, who was previously suspended for doping, she said:

“Do I think people caught for doping offenses should be on the team? No ... It is just something that needs to be set in stone that this is what we are going to do. Let’s settle this and be done with it. There should not be any bouncing back and forwards.”

Doping has been a part of the Olympics since forever, and a part of the larger sports world for the same timeframe. In an environment where competitors are constantly trying to get an edge on their opponents, it’s inevitable that some will do whatever they think is necessary, regardless of the laws in place. Those laws, like the limits of the body, are just more obstacles to overcome on the path to immortality.

“A 2015 study in Sports Medicine found that that somewhere in the (wide) range of 14 to 39 percent of elite athletes do some sort of doping. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency estimates that over 3 million Americans use performance-enhancing drugs. For 2014, the year with the latest data, the World Anti-Doping Agency handed out over 1,600 “anti-doping rule violations” to people from 109 nationalities in 83 sports.”

When these transgressors are caught, like Yang, Gatlin, Efimova, they’re publicly shamed and disgraced. It hardly matters what the drugs are or what edge, if any, it gives them. That they violated the rules means that there is no forgiveness. It becomes their scarlet letter. The sporting version of the labeling of a snitch in the rap world.

The labeling of a snitch is a lifetime scar

You’ll always be in jail ... just minus the bars

The defamed Efimova has hit back, explaining that her failed test wasn’t done purposely and that one shouldn’t be forever demonized for their transgression:

“But I know there have been very many occasions where people do it because they don’t know or because they’re stupid or naïve. There always should be another chance. When you are driving a car and break a rule, you get only a ticket. You don’t lose your license for life or get put in jail.”

What Efimova, Yang and Gatlin now face is a fight for redemption. Not a battle to clear their name, that is a lost cause—their competitors and the general world are far too stubborn to allow nuance in such a moral-heavy discussion—but a struggle to find life after the fact. Precisely, is it fair to forever discount their current and future achievements because of the failed tests?

Gatlin won the 100-meter gold back in 2004, and was promptly hit with a four-year ban in 2006 after testing positive for excessive “testosterone or its precursor” (Gatlin had also been suspended in 2001, though he was reinstated early after an appeal). Usain Bolt, who he will be racing against this year, would astonish the world with his performances in the next two Olympics, setting world records in numerous events and eclipsing Gatlin and everyone else in superstardom.

Gatlin is 34, like another disgraced sprinter: Tyson Gay. He won bronze in the 2012 Olympics, and has posted six of the fastest times in the 100 meters in 2014 and 2015 as Bolt dealt with injuries. This, rather than helping him rebuild his reputation, raises even more suspicions. Age slows everyone down, and with his history, he’s automatically guilty until proven innocent. It’s unbelievable that he’s this good at this age. And even if the tests show that he’s clean, the skepticism will still linger.

So now he’s at a stage where anything he does comes with an asterisk. Imagine that he actually beats Bolt in Rio—he posted a time of 9.80 to Bolt’s 9.88 in the 100 already this year—and wins the gold medal, how welcome would it be? One suspects it would be the same as Yang’s gold, or Efimova’s silver; probably even more scrutinized given his age and the star power of his competition. The line of thinking would be that he had to use steroids to win, even if the there’s no actual evidence to support it in the present or the hypothetical future.

Because the disgrace of a failed drug test doesn’t end when an athlete serves out his or her ban. The future is forfeited in the same bad sample. That’s the mistake of Gatlin, of Efimova, and of Yang in believing that once the punishment is over, their records are clean.

When Lilly King says that there should be no forgiveness for athletes with failed tests in their past, she’s speaking with the brashness of a teenager. There’s a lack of understanding behind her words. We generally tend to believe that people deserve second chances in life, yet fail repeatedly in the application of that belief. We grant ourselves that leniency when we stumble, but are absolute when it comes to others.

If King were to test positive for any banned substance, even by mistake, her pleas would almost certainly reflect that of Efimova’s. Yet she can never consider that perspective.

It’s all because of our belief in the purity of sport. That everything should be done the right way, the clean way. Which is a very fair standard, but doesn’t take in consideration the complexity of reality. Athletes will always fall in the face of this ideal—the failure is the result of so many pressures in a hyper-competitive environment. In a world where winning is everything, where athletes’ identities are tied to their respective sports and their financial futures and social status are intertwined to success in their events, certain lines will be crossed. That’s as much of their faults as everything surrounding them that we’ve created. When limits are reached, and the only true choices are to accept the dead-end or to illegally transcend them, drug tests will be failed.

This is not a call to open the door to doping everywhere but one to be more compassionate and receptive to legitimate second chances.

That may just be as unrealistic as expecting the games to be clean. After all, the crowd booed Efimova and every other Russian participant because of their history. Yang was shunned because of his failed tests and Gatlin has been fighting for years to regain half of the recognition that he had before the failed test in 2006 to little avail. And if he were to win this year, the accomplishment is likely to be met with boos and anger rather than appreciation.

These athletes may have been allowed to compete, but that’s the limit of the world’s generosity. Many others like Gay, Ben Johnson, Larisa Lazutina, and Johann Mühlegg can attest to that. The labeling of a cheat is a lifetime scar, though that negation of a second chance might not be fair at all.